1 good, 2 bad from Newcastle's Monday night shocker at Leeds

Newcastle United were soundly beaten by Leeds United 4-1 on Monday night bringing the unbeaten start to the season to a shuddering halt. 

United simply didn’t turn up on the night as Jaissle’s vertical system was ruthlessly exploited by a high pressing, high energy Leeds side.

Toure scored a conciliation for United, after strikes from Calvert-Lewin, Okafor, Bogle, and a Lewis Miley own goal.

Here’s my one good and two bad good from the game:

Bad: Weak in central midfield

In an all-round stinker of a night, it was the central midfield that really worried me. We weren’t really in control when Nico was on the pitch, but once he went off, we were so weak in there that Leeds could basically waltz through it with ease.

It’s a small sample size but one thing I really hate about this vertical football system is the pressure it puts on our centre backs to play line splitting passes, which they just incapable of doing at the minute, which then results in the opposition defenders easily mopping the long ball up, play a simple pass through our powderpuff central midfield pairing (who were all over place or covering the wrong spaces last night) and then they’re all over us.

Considering Miley was excellent against Liverpool and Spurs he’s taken a real downturn over the last two games and Steur (who was also excellent on debut against Liverpool) was swallowed up by that game as Leeds pressed the young lad to death and he just looked shell shocked.

I think when Jaissle looks back on the game he will come to regret not bringing on Jacob Ramsey when Nico went off injured, as he still appears to be the only central midfielder in the squad capable of progressing the ball through the opposition press with any pace or fluidity.

Bad: Centre back pairing a real concern

If I was the manager, I’d get Schar and Burn back in as the centre back pairing as soon as is humanly possible. Botman has had a disaster start to the season giving the ball away consistently, is weak in the challenge, doesn’t cover the right runners and his lumps up field are about as effective as outlined above. He looks a shadow of the player we signed from Lille.

Malick Thiaw is a real concern for me. He doesn’t look like a captain; he never gets in the ref’s face or pleads our case with them (just look at Amapdu all night) and we know with how poor the refs are that this needs to be exploited as they will capitulate in the face of it. His pathetic Dyer-esque flick to try and block Leeds’ fourth is unforgivable for me and flies in the face of Jaissle’s comments in the preseason training videos about putting your body on the line to block shots.

Before last night we were conceding an average of two goals a game already and that’s with Hornicek making the most saves in the division and I think a lot of it stems from the centre back pairing.

Good(ish): Better after the triple change and it’s early days

Whilst it would’ve been easy to go all negative after such a poor display (which would’ve been wholly deserved such was the abject nature of it) I thought we did improve after the triple sub in the second half and Toure, who not only grabbed the conciliation, looked head and shoulders better than Murphy (who was diabolically bad) and has surely played himself into a start next week?

Tino seemed to offer more going forward, although how much of that was down to Leeds taking their foot of the gas is debatable, and Dedic has been so good at the start of his United career it would seem madness to drop him, but it’s undeniable that Tino got into more dangerous situations than the Bosnian did all night.

Willock seemed a better fit than Wissa in the ten, but I do think that is our weakest position on the pitch which is real concern because it seems integral to Jaissle’s system. I’d still like to see Ramsey play there (as he often did for Villa when he wasn’t playing off the left) but the entire system needs tweaking anyway with the makeup of our squad as it stands.

When the fixtures were announced and the summer unfolded the way it did the start to the season screamed zero points so to have five with the new squad and new coaching set up is a good position to be in and if we can find a way to beat Hull and have eight points from five games then I think that can be considered a decent start to the season, especially with a three week international break upcoming that will hopefully give Jaissle the time he didn’t have in preseason to get this system tweaked and appropriate for our young squad.

Keep the faith. HWTL